


Premonition

by Ektal



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: The Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Post TWoK
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-23
Updated: 2016-01-23
Packaged: 2018-05-15 17:33:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5793592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ektal/pseuds/Ektal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post "The Wrath of Khan"; the Enterprise has just returned to Earth. Kirk shuts himself up in his apartment and finishes reading the book Spock gave him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Premonition

Slowly, he took off his glasses from above his nose and, with shaking hand, put them on the bed. He eyed the book he was holding; he scrolled through the words printed on the pages without reading them, seeing only lines of symbols which had lost all their meaning. His arm started to tremble, its hair standing on end.  
With all the little strength he still possessed and all the abundant despair which hadn't left him for days, he threw the book against the wall. It fell messily, its rigid cover facing upwards, its thin pages creating yellowish waves against the floor.  
Kirk sat on the edge of the bed, leaning his elbows on his knees and covering his face with one hand. He was entirely focused on the last lines he read, otherwise he would have been aware of the fingernails which were trying to cut flesh, of the veins which tried to emerge from the back of his hand, of the tears caught in his lashes which threatened to fall.  
He had just returned in his apartment a few hours ago. The Enterprise was going to be put in disarmament, and he was going to be stationed on ground again. Away from his chair. Away from the place where he could make a difference.  
He felt lonely.  
His crew was going to dispose, and his dearest friends couldn't be there with him. The dear Doctor was laying on a bed to digest his "fatigue" attack – this is the cause the physicians attributed to his delirium – and the Vulcan...Spock was now far away.  
And this was the thought that made the tears fall.  
When he felt something damp wetting his palm, he removed his hand from his face and stood looking at his fingers, his palm and the lines crossing it, wondering how many days still had to pass before he too, would run out of the time suggested by his life line.  
Normally in similar circumstances, Kirk would have closed his fingers in a tight fist, ground his teeth and stoically got up. But not this time. This time, his fingers stretched and with some difficulty, millimeter after millimeter, his middle finger neared the index one, the ring finger, the pinkie, the thumb pointing out.  
It was the same gesture, but for some reason it resembled only vaguely the expert greeting of his old friend. It lacked grace, simplicity, harmony. Simply, it lacked beauty. And other tears flowed over his face to the ironic memory of his last thoughts, while through the glass he watched his friend die. He would miss his kindness, his intelligence and keenness, his humor, his elegance. He would miss the touch of that light hand on his shoulder. He was angry with the glass itself, which for last had the opportunity to benefit from that warm caress.  
While remembering, he had looked up to the wall and just as he roused, the first thing which hit him was the book which with such fervor, he had thrown.  
He immediately got up and took it, almost reverently, trying to smooth the pages with the same delicacy used by a mother who smooths her son's hair. He regretted at once his desperate act and clutched the book against his chest with both his arms, hoping in this way to override the evil thing he did to it and at the same time, imagining in its place its giver.  
He sat again and reopened the book on the last page which saw the light before being closed violently. And again, he read again incredulous.  
He had never believed in coincidences, much less in prophecies and the reading of the future. And yet all matched. Almost perfectly so much, that Kirk wondered if Spock had known what was going to happen before leaving for the trip which lead to his death.  
"Impossible," he said to himself. But its impossibility didn't stop him from reading again those last lines and confront Dickens' creativity and fantasy with reality and the facts just passed.  
Because Carton's sacrifice reminded him of another sacrifice: his thinking of others before himself. That choice, guided by the belief that what he was doing was the right thing to do, also against his friend's tears and the doom. Carton knew his action would have been remembered, his name kept on the mouths of his acquaintances and – as a premonition – given to the son of the girl he had so loved and for whom he had chosen to sacrifice himself. Maybe Spock had not thought about all of these things, he was beyond that. In those few moments, probably only the logic of what he was doing filled his mind and maybe, in a well controlled corner, a light thought touched his friends and their safety too.  
"It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done. It is a far, far better rest that I go than I have ever known."  
Kirk read and read again many times these last words. And again, he could do nothing but wonder if Spock knew, if his gift hadn't been the last word of farewell, a last message.  
He closed the book, this time with nostalgic gentleness, and brought it to his lips.  
When he put it back on the desk, on its cover there were traces of salt water.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my beta Basketballgirl Kaitlin ^^


End file.
